Rupert Murdoch files for divorce from wife of 14 years Wendi Deng | Daily Mail Online comments The reason Rupert Murdoch has filed for divorce from his wife of 14 years Wendi Deng is reported to be 'jaw-dropping.' Since news emerged of the media tycoon's decision, Twitter has been awash with speculation about why the 82-year-old is splitting up with his third wife. BBC financial correspondent Robert Peston, who is said to be a close friends with some key Murdoch staffers, hinted at a shocking reason writing on his Twitter page: 'Undisclosed reasons for Murdoch divorcing Deng are jaw-dropping.' Later several US websites began carrying a denial of one of the astonishing theories that emerged from the Twitter rumour mill and which was unsupported by any evidence.

Scroll down for video Divorce: Media tycoon Rupert Murdoch and Wendi Deng's marriage came less than a month after his divorce from ex-wife Anna Maria Torv Murdoch Mann was finalized Pay-out?: A source told MailOnline there is a prenuptial agreement in place and the divorce will not have any real effect on News Corporation Divorce: Media mogul Rupert Murdoch and wife Wendi Deng Murdoch arrive on the red carpet for the 85th Annual Academy Awards in February Big day: The couple married on a yacht in 1999, 17 days after his divorce from his second wife Anna Torv Rumours: BBC financial correspondent Robert Peston, who is said to be a close friends with some key Murdoch staffers, hinted at a shocking reason writing on his Twitter page For more videos, please go to Murdoch's biographer, Michael Wolff, added to the speculation writing on his Twitter account: 'I'm hearing the WHY, the big reveal, the scandal details, could come tomorrow.' 'I think he genuinely loved her,' Mr Wolff told the Guardian.

'Everyone is wondering what went wrong.' The News Corp chairman and CEO married Wendi, 44, in 1999 after meeting at a party in Hong Kong two years prior. She is most famously known for punching a man who threw a pie at her husband over the phone hacking scandal during a British parliamentary committee. A source told MailOnline there is not only a pre-nuptial agreement, but also two further 'post-nups' in 2002 and 2004. The divorce will not have any real effect on News Corporation. Their 1999 marriage came 17 days after his divorce from ex-wife Anna Maria Torv Murdoch Mann was finalized, which was one of the most expensive in history at $1.7billion. Court papers state 'the relationship has been irretrievably broken for the last six months'. They lived in a $44 million Fifth Avenue penthouse previously owned by Laurance S. Rockefeller and have an impressive portfolio of homes in Los Angeles, London, Canberra, Australia, Carmel, California, and Centre Island, New York. New York home: 834 Fifth Avenue where Rupert Murdoch and Wendi Deng live in a triplex on the top floors.

Rupert bought it for $44million in 2005 Triplex: Murdoch and Wendi lived in the top three floors of 834 Fifth Avenue in New York Beverly Hills Home: One of the many properties Murdoch owns which he could lose in the divorce. Though the couple have a prenup, it depends how water tight it is and Deng is expected to fight for some of his estate The Murdochs would have celebrated their fourteenth wedding anniversary in less than a fortnight. A source told the Mail: 'This divorce is no surprise, it's been on the cards for a while. Wendi and Rupert have been living separate lives. She's a New York fixture and is interested in her own career.' Ira E. Garr of the law firm Garr Silpe is representing Murdoch in the divorce. He has represented Ivana Trump in the past. THE BIGGEST DIVORCE IN HISTORY? With a net worth of $11.2billion, Rupert Murdoch's divorce from Wendi Deng could be the most expensive ever. Married three times, his split from second wife, of 32 years, Anna Murdoch, in 1999, is currently the world's biggest.

She received $1.7billion of his assets - including $110million in cash, according to ABC news. The second most expensive divorce was in 2008, when Formula One tycoon Bernie Ecclestone settled with Slavica for $1.2billion. Australia-born Murdoch took residence in America in 1974 and became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 1985, based in New York City. The couple filed for their divorce at the New York State Supreme Court this morning. It is not clear which of them will move out of their Upper East Side apartment. As well as New York being their main residence, the pair may have filed their petition in the city because it's 'a place where prenups are generally given a significant amount of presumptive validity by the courts', Bernard Clair, an established Manhattan divorce lawyer not involved in the Murdoch case, told NBC. The issue of such validity would arise if the agreement was challenged in court. Entering into a prenup has long been an option in the U.S. and all states recognize premarital agreements through statutes or court decisions.

Such agreements have only recently become legally enforceable in Australia, since 2000; and prenups first became legally recognized in Britain in 2010. A pre-nuptial agreement is a contract entered into before marriage which specifies property and financial distribution in the event that the marriage terminates. In the case of the Murdochs, the education and upbringing of the children born to the couple will also be an issue, as they have two daughters together - Grace, 11 and Chloe, nine. The couple had a pre-nup agreement and have held shares in trust for their children, so the divorce is unlikely to lessen the media mogul's grip on his media empire. Under the property distribution laws in many states, a spouse who brings a large amount of cash, property, and other financial holdings to a marriage and makes them part of the marital estate may lose much of that property to the other spouse upon divorce. Therefore, a spouse who brings substantially more money or property to a marriage may want a premarital agreement to protect some or all of those assets if the marriage fails.

Murdoch's marriage to his first wife, Patricia Booker, a former shop assistant and flight attendant from Melbourne, lasted from 1956 to 1967. They had one daughter, Prudence, in 1958. It is not clear what settlement they reached. The couple, who married on a private yacht in 1999, have two children, Grace, 11, and Chloe, nine, to whom Miss Deng admits to being a disciplinarian mother. According to the Guardian the pair have filed for joint custody of their children. A source familiar with the matter told MailOnline that Wendi has no voting stock in News Corp. Though their two daughters have financial shares in the family trust, they do not have voting shares. Murdoch's older children by his previous wives have the holding rights. He and second wife Anna had three children — Lachlan, James and Elisabeth. The couple are said to have clashed over this in 2006 after Murdoch said in an interview that Grace and Chloe would be on a level footing in terms of the family's economic trust with his children from his previous marriages, but they would not have the same voting rights.

They are said to have eventually come to a more acceptable agreement. A year ago, she was profiled in a New York Times story which claimed the couple were leading 'largely separate lives' and the Daily Beast reported they were sleeping in separate bedrooms. These reports are a far cry from the show of unity just one year earlier when Deng leaped to the defense of her husband during a grueling question and answering session in British Parliament, punching a protestor who tried to throw a cream pie in his face. Her actions seemed to give their marriage legitimacy, as she was previously thought to merely be a 'gold-digger' and 'trophy wife'. Murdoch's net worth was listed at $11.2 billion by Forbes in March, ranking him 33rd on the U.S. billionaire's list. His last divorce, from Scottish-born Anna Murdoch, after 32 years of marriage, cost him £1billion. However, Miss Deng may be able to demand a larger settlement because she has been actively involved in the Murdoch business in China, where she is chief of strategy for its social networking site MySpace. The divorce papers were filed at the New York state supreme court in Manhattan yesterday morning.

Miss Deng was credited with rejuvenating the 82-year-old News Corporation founder, chairman and CEO, transforming his wardrobe and introducing him to a new group of younger friends in the new media world, including Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. Deng is reportedly the daughter of a factory director who grew up in the eastern Chinese city of Xuzhou in 1968. She left for the U.S. when she was 19-years-old to study and worked in a Chinese restaurant in California before going on to graduate from Yale University in 1996. While studying at a medical college, she met an American couple, Jake and Joyce Cherry, who had been temporarily relocated to the country to work on a factory. She learned English from the couple and they ultimately sponsored her to travel to the United States when she was 19 to take classes at California State University. But Mrs Cherry soon learned Deng was having an affair with Jake Cherry, who was three decades her senior, the Wall Street Journal reported in 2000. She ordered the girl out of her home and Jake Cherry followed closely behind. He divorced his wife and married Deng, who was 22.

RELATED ARTICLES Murdoch files for divorce from wife Wendi Murdoch files for divorce from wife Wendi News Corp chief executive married Wendi Deng in 1999 Thu, Jun 13, 2013, 17:42 Updated: Thu, Jun 13, 2013, 17:54 Rupert Murdoch, arrives with his wife Wendi Deng at the 85th Academy Awards in Hollywood, California in February. Photograph: Lucy Nicholson/Reuters News Corp chief executive Rupert Murdoch has filed for divorce from his wife Wendi (44), the company confirmedtoday. The reasons for the filing were not immediately clear. Mr Murdoch (82) married the former Wendi Deng in 1999. Video: Wendi Murdoch comes to husband's rescue Ms Deng famously defended her husband from a man who attacked him with a pie made of shaving foam while he was giving evidence to the Commons Culture, Media and Sport Committee about the phone-hacking scandal in 2011. Ms Deng leapt to her feet and slapped the assailant, Jonathan May-Bowles, across the head.

The couple, who have two daughters, were married weeks after Mr Murdoch’s divorce from his previous wife, Anna. This would be the publishing tycoon’s third divorce. His first marriage, to Patricia Booker, ended in 1965. Two years later, he married a reporter at one of his newspapers, Anna Torv, and had three children, Elisabeth, Lachlan and James, all of whom have figured prominently at one point in the workings of his company. Mr Murdoch’s net worth is $12.1 billion, making him the world’s 79th richest person, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. News Corp's Rupert Murdoch files for divorce from wife - U.S. News U.S. News News Corp's Rupert Murdoch files for divorce from wife By U.S. News Email Rupert Murdoch and wife Wendi Deng were married in 1999. Murdoch has filed for divorce, reports CNBC's Robert Frank. Rupert Murdoch, News Corp's chief executive and one of the richest men in America, has filed for divorce from his third wife Wendi, a spokesman for the company confirmed to CNBC on Thursday.

The reasons for the split were not immediately clear, but sources said the couple had been leading largely separate lives after 14 years of marriage. The company spokesman said the relationship had been irretrievably broken for more than six months before he filed for divorce Thursday. Born in China and educated in the U.S., the former Wendi Deng was working for News Corp. subsidiary Star TV in Hong Kong when she met Murdoch in 1997. Two years later, Murdoch, 82, married Deng, 44, on a yacht in New York Harbor — less than three weeks after his divorce from second wife, Anna, was finalized. They have two daughters, born in 2001 and 2003. After the wedding, Wendi remained involved in the conglomerate's Chinese interests and Internet and film ventures, and she produced the 2011 feature "Snow Flower and the Secret Fan" for Fox Searchlight pictures. In Oct. 2012, Murdoch gave his wife a shout-out on Twitter for her "hard work" on the website Art.sy. In July 2011, the onetime volleyball player became the unexpected star of a British hearing into phone hacking by News Corp.

when she tried to smack a protester who went after husband with a foam pie. Matt Sayles / AP file Rupert Murdoch and his wife Wendi arrive at the 69th Annual Golden Globe Awards in Los Angeles, on Jan. 15, 2012. On Thursday, Murdoch filed for divorce from Wendi Deng Murdoch, his wife since 1999. Murdoch's net worth was listed at $11.2 billion by Forbes in March, ranking him 33rd on the U.S. billionaire's list. The divorce filing comes just ahead of News Corp.'s planned split into two separate publicly traded companies, one for its entertainment businesses and the other for publishing. The couple has a prenuptial agreement the terms of which give Wendi Murdoch cash and property, not company control, sources told CNBC. Murdoch is being represented by veteran Manhattan defense attorney Ira Garr, whose high-profile clients have included Ivana Trump. Garr's office said he would have no comment. Raoul Felder, a Manhattan divorce lawyer who has represented ex-Mayor Rudolph Giuliani and actress Robin Givens and is not involved in the Murdochs case, said he expected the split would be very private.

"They sit down in a lawyer's office and the lawyers prepare papers," Felder said. "They'll never see the inside of a courtroom." He said that given Murdoch's immense wealth, it's likely his wife is getting enough of a payout that she would not challenge any agreement, especially since prenups are rarely overturned. "Money is a cheap currency when you have a lot of it," Felder said. "I'm sure he was very generous.' Bernard Clair, another well-known Manhattan divorce attorney, said the globe-trotting CEO may have chosen to file in New York, where he has a home, because it's "a place where prenups are generally given a significant amount of presumptive validity by the courts." It's also possible the prenup stipulates that it must be interpreted and enforced according to New York law, Clair said. This story was originally published on Thu Jun 13, 2013 12:34 PM EDT News Corp's Rupert Murdoch files for divorce from wife Wendi | Reuters Fri Jun 14, 2013 | 9:51 AM EDT News Corp's Rupert Murdoch files for divorce from wife Wendi By Liana B.

Baker | NEW YORK NEW YORK News Corp Chief Executive Rupert Murdoch on Thursday filed for divorce from his wife of 14 years, Wendi, seeking to end a marriage that had been irretrievably broken for more than six months, according to his spokesman. Murdoch, 82, married the former Wendi Deng, 44, in 1999 in his third and her second marriage. They have two young daughters. The divorce filing, which was sealed, comes just days before News Corp is to split into two companies, one containing its entertainment assets and the other holding its publishing business. Murdoch, who Forbes says is worth $9.4 billion, is to be chairman of both publicly traded companies. Despite the timing, there is no connection between the divorce and the corporate split, said a source close to News Corp who was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly. Deng could not be reached for comment. Analysts said the end of the Murdochs' marriage was unlikely to have an impact on the media empire. Murdoch and Deng had a prenuptial agreement, according to a person familiar with the situation.

Their girls, Grace and Chloe, have stakes in the family trust that holds the Murdochs' stake in News Corp, but they do not have voting rights. "I doubt it has a substantial impact on the spin," Gabelli & Co analyst Brett Harriss said, referring to the News Corp separation. "Given that it's his third wife, I see it unlikely that he didn't plan for this contingency." Ira Garr, an attorney listed as representing Murdoch, said he filed the divorce papers just after 11 a.m. EDT on Thursday. Garr, who previously represented Ivana Trump and actor Anthony Quinn's wife Yolanda, declined to comment further. Deng is represented by attorney Pamela Sloan, chair of the Family Law section of the New York State Bar Association. Sloan, a partner of the firm Aronson Mayefsky and Sloan, did not immediately return a call seeking comment. Details of the prenuptial agreement were not known and it was not clear who would move out of the Murdochs' apartment in New York City's tony Upper East Side. Murdoch also has four grown children, Prudence from his first marriage, and Lachlan, James and Elisabeth from his second.

These four grown children all have voting rights unlike Murdoch's two children with Deng. The family trust owned 38.4 percent of the voting stock in News Corp as of April 30. FROM INTERPRETER TO STAR Deng, the daughter of a factory director in Guangzhou, China, came to the United States in 1988 after serving as an interpreter for a Los Angeles couple working in China. The couple sponsored her to live with them, and the husband later left his wife and married Deng. After their brief marriage, Deng went on to get an MBA from Yale and landed a job at News Corp's Star TV as an intern in 1996. She met Murdoch in 1998, when she was a junior executive who acted as his interpreter during a business trip to China. The pair married shortly after Murdoch divorced his wife of 31 years, Anna. Shortly after they married, Rupert Murdoch said in an interview with Australian magazine The Monthly that his new wife's job was "as a home decorator," and that she was not "some business genius about to take over News." "She's intelligent, but she's not going to do that," he said. Her friends were incensed.

"She didn't marry him to sit at home and be a society wife," one friend told the magazine. His views may have changed, as Deng told Vogue that "Rupert thinks I have a good head on my shoulders. Whatever I do he is very involved in." Indeed, Deng has been involved in her husband's business in China, putting her Mandarin language skills to use and bridging cultural differences. When News Corp still owned Myspace, she gave strategic advice to that Internet business in China and pocketed $92,000 in fees in 2010, according to a filing. But she never had a major role in her husband's company, unlike Murdoch's former wife Anna Murdoch, who had a position on News Corp's board until 1998. Lately, Deng has pursued her own endeavors such as co-producing the movie "Snow Flower and the Secret Fan," a story set in 19th century China about the tough cultural norms imposed on women. The movie, distributed by News Corp's Fox Searchlight in 2011, grossed just over $11 million.

Deng has since produced another film, "Journey of a Thousand Miles," based on the memoir of Chinese pianist Lang Lang. To many people outside the media industry, Deng is best known for defending her husband from a foam pie a prankster threw at the mogul while he was testifying before the British Parliament over News Corp's phone-hacking scandal in July 2011. More than halfway through the hearing, Deng suddenly leapt from her seat to intercept the pie with a furious slap, gaining the nickname "tiger wife." The divorce is bound to be fodder for tabloid newspapers around the world, though Murdoch's own New York Post and The Sun did not have their own stories on their websites more than four hours after the news broke. The Post offered a link to a partner video headlined "Billionaire News Corp Owner Rupert Murdoch Divorcing Wife #3." Murdoch's more sedate Times of London had the story near the top of its homepage, with the straightforward "Rupert Murdoch: files for divorce from wife Wendi." An early jab came from the media website Gawker, which offered its best parody of a Post headline.

"Loveless Body in Pointless Marriage," Gawker wrote, using the Post's typeface imposed over a picture of Murdoch and Deng. (Reporting by Liana B. Baker, Jennifer Saba, Karen Freifeld, Nicola Leske and Ron Grover; Writing by Ben Berkowitz; Editing by Dan Grebler, Edward Tobin and Ryan Woo) ADVERTISEMENT 1/2 Rupert Murdoch, chairman and CEO of News Corporation, arrives with his wife Wendi Deng at the 85th Academy Awards in Hollywood, California in this February 24, 2013 file photo. Reuters/Lucy Nicholson/File + 2/2 Wendi Deng (2nd L) lunges towards a man trying to attack her husband, News Corp Chief Executive and Chairman Rupert Murdoch, during a parliamentary committee hearing on phone hacking at Portcullis House in London in this July 19, 2011 file photo. News Corp Chief Executive Rupert Murdoch has filed for divorce from his wife Wendi, the company confirmed on June 13, 2013.

Reuters/Parbul TV via Reuters TV + Wendi Deng: Rupert Murdoch files for divorce from third wife | Media | The Guardian Rupert Murdoch Wendi Deng: Rupert Murdoch files for divorce from third wife News Corporation boss cites irretrievable breakdown in marriage in divorce filing from woman seen as key player in media empire Rupert Murdoch and Wendi Deng were married in 1999. Photograph: The Washington Post/Getty Images Dominic Rushe in New York, Josh Halliday and Lisa O'Carroll in London Friday 14 June 2013 04.52 EDT First published on Friday 14 June 2013 04.52 EDT Close This article is 3 years old News Corp boss Rupert Murdoch has filed for divorce from Wendi Deng Murdoch, the mother of his two youngest children and a woman seen as a key player in the media empire. The news, first reported by Deadline Hollywood and confirmed by a spokesman, brings to an end the media mogul's third marriage. Murdoch, 82, met Deng in 1997 at a company party in Hong Kong.

They were married two years later, less than a month after his divorce from ex-wife Anna Murdoch was finalised after 32 years of marriage. The couple are believed to have filed for joint custody of their children but there were no details of any settlement. Murdoch has cited irretrievable breakdown in marriage for more than six months as the reason for the divorce. In the divorce filing released on Wednesday, Murdoch's lawyers said that the "relationship between husband and wife had broken down irretrievably". Deng, born in China and educated at Yale, has been credited with a makeover of her mogul partner, introducing him to a younger, more tech-savvy set of friends including the Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and Twitter's co-founder Jack Dorsey. They married on 25 June 1999 in a twilight ceremony on board Murdoch's garland-bedecked yacht, the Morning Glory, in New York Harbor. Welsh singing star Charlotte Church (who it later emerged waived a £100,000 fee) serenaded the couple with a trio of ballads. Deng, now 44, went on to shake up his wardrobe and join a rarefied social circle of Hollywood celebrities and chief executives.

Yet, although there had been periodic rumours of marital difficulties, the announcement of the end of his third marriage caught Murdoch-watchers off guard. Wendi Murdoch had been seen as a key player in the News Corp empire, a woman who was more than a match for the dynastic plotting that dominates the media family. "I was totally surprised," said Michael Wolff, Murdoch's biographer and author of The Man Who Owns The News. "Everyone is trying to figure it out." He described Deng as the "most significant figure in the closing chapters of Rupert's life" and said she had changed his politics, his friends, his relationship with his family and even the way he dresses. "She has had an enormous impact on his life," said Wolff. Deng became internationally famous in July 2011 after leaping to block an attack by protester Jonathan May-Bowles, who threw a pie at her husband during a British parliamentary committee hearing into the News International phone-hacking scandal. "I think he genuinely loved her," said Wolff. "Everyone is wondering what went wrong." The split came on the same day as another moment of epochal change for Murdoch.

The News Corporation empire that he built from a single newspaper in Adelaide is to be split in two and Wednesday was the day that the company set out the timetable for trading to begin in the two new companies – one focused on his Fox film and television stations and a second, bearing the News Corp name, housing his newspapers, including the Sun and the Times. That split came about after Murdoch's newspaper business was shattered by the hacking scandal that rocked his empire and led to the arrest of some of his closest allies and his public humiliation. But announcing the separation now, was, it was suggested, timed to ensure that investors were abreast of the financial implications. Murdoch will control a 30% bloc of voting shares in the two successor companies. Deng herself is likely only to benefit in a limited – but still sizeable – way from their separation: the couple signed a prenuptial agreement and two further agreements in 2002 and 2004. That, though, may have reflected the fact that the media mogul had already made one of the largest known divorce settlements. Anna Murdoch, his second wife of 32 years, received a $1.7bn divorce settlement, including $100m in cash.

It was the second most costly divorce on record after that of French billionaire Alec Wildenstein and his wife Jocelyn. However, there will be financial benefits for Deng's family in the future, which could create complications for the family's long-term control of his newspapers and television stations. Each of Murdoch's six children have an equal economic interest in the family trust that controls the all-important bloc of shares – Prudence MacLeod, the only daughter from his first, short marriage to Patricia Booker, is the oldest, but the best known are Elisabeth, Lachlan and James, children from his 32-year union to Anna Murdoch. Deng and Murdoch had two daughters – Grace, 11, whose godfather is Tony Blair, and Chloe, nine, who, like Grace, was baptised on the banks of the river Jordan, at the spot where Jesus was said to have undergone the same ceremony. Also acting as godparents were two more of Wendi's friends – Nicole Kidman and Hugh Jackman. Deng had been a key player in News Corp's push into China and is chief of strategy for MySpace's China operation.

The Wall Street Journal, which Murdoch owns, described her as News Corp's "de-facto diplomat" in China. But she does not sit on the board, as Anna once did. News Corp insiders said the divorce would have no impact on the business. News Corp's founder paid out £1.1bn when he divorced Anna Torv, but lawyers don't think that will be repeated. By Lisa O"Carroll Published: 14 Jun 2013 A protester lunges towards James and Rupert Murdoch as they give evidence on phone hacking to MPs Published: 19 Jul 2011 Rupert Murdoch Files for Divorce - The Daily Beast Rupert Murdoch Files for Divorce Imeh Akpanudosen/Getty Media magnate Rupert Murdoch has filed for divorce from his wife, Wendi Deng Murdoch. The filing was made Thursday morning in New York State Supreme Court. Murdoch married Wendi Deng in 1999 after she came to the U.S. on a student visa from China.

Deng Murdoch is now the chief of strategy for MySpace’s operations in China, and briefly became a media sensation in 2011 when she shielded Murdoch from a pie thrown by a heckler during his testimony before the British Parliament over his London newspapers’ phone-hacking schemes. The couple have two children together. Who is Wendi Murdoch? | Business | The Guardian The Observer Who is Wendi Murdoch? Last week the normally austere Wall Street Journal published an extraordinary investigation into the tangled love life and massive influence of Rupert Murdoch's wife, Wendi Deng. The paper sent reporters to Beijing, Singapore and Los Angeles to produce a story that has made headlines round the world. Here we print the original WSJ article by John Lippman, Leslie Chang and Robert Frank Saturday 4 November 2000 20.12 EST Share on Messenger Close When NewsCorp officials gathered in the Hong Kong convention centre last March to unveil their latest Chinese internet investment, a tall woman handed out a business card that read 'News Corporation/Wendi Deng Murdoch'. Deng is not a NewsCorp employee.

Once a junior executive at the company's Star TV in Hong Kong, Deng, 31, quit her post before marrying NewsCorp chairman Rupert Murdoch last year. Since then, she has been portrayed - by Murdoch and the company - as a traditional housewife who attends to decorating, her husband's diet and the like. But Deng is no homebody. Though she doesn't have a formal position with her husband's media empire, she has quickly asserted her influence over NewsCorp's operations and investments in Asia, its most important growth market. Working with her stepson, James Murdoch, 27, Deng has initiated or advocated Chinese internet investments totalling between $35 million and $45m, according to a top NewsCorp executive. With her advice, the company has also formed partnerships with cable companies in the region looking to upgrade their systems for high-speed video and internet access. Murdoch, who is 69, has never hesitated to put family members to work in his businesses. Last month, he named his eldest son, Lachlan, 29, deputy chief operating officer, in a move partly aimed at clarifying that he is his father's heir.

James serves as chief executive of Star TV and has carved out Asia and the internet as his province. Even Murdoch's ex-wife, Anna Mann, whom he divorced last year, has an office and assistant at NewsCorp's New York offices, although she no longer has an active role with the company. Now, Deng is rising to a place of prominence in the family business. People within NewsCorp and outsiders involved in the Chinese internet and media industries say she identifies potential investments for her husband's company and acts as his liaison and translator in China. These people say Deng is well suited for this unusual role. The daughter of a factory director in Guangzhou, China, Deng came to the US 12 years ago with the aid of a California couple. The husband in that couple later left his wife for Deng. She mastered English, climbed from a California college to Yale's business school and eventually landed at Star TV in Hong Kong. Having left China in obscurity as a teenager, Deng is now returning in grand style, as the wife and adviser of a global media baron. 'Wendi gives NewsCorp a Chinese face in China,' says Joseph Ravitch, co-head of the global media practice at Goldman Sachs Group, which advises NewsCorp on its Asia strategy.

'She represents not just the company but the owner, and that's critical in a country where families are very important.' Murdoch has long been fascinated by the potential of the Chinese market, and his Fox studio was a pioneer in the country. But at times, he has seemed to lack the feel for subtleties his wife is said to have. In 1993, shortly after he acquired control of Star TV, Murdoch made a still-notorious remark that satellite TV would prove 'an unambiguous threat to totalitarian regimes everywhere'. China immediately retaliated by banning private ownership of satellite dishes. Reception by private households of Star TV and its affiliate, Phoenix Satellite Television, remains illegal in China, though many cable operators and residential compounds defy the ban and carry the channels. Murdoch gradually repaired relations with the Chinese. He pulled the BBC from Star TV, making the channel more palatable to the Beijing government. He sold the South China Morning Post to a pro-Beijing businessman. And at his behest, NewsCorp's HarperCollins publishing unit killed a book contract with the last governor of Hong Kong, Chris Patten.

Today, NewsCorp's officially restricted Phoenix channel is a favourite among urban Chinese households, and the company has greater access to the mainland market than any of its competitors. With the exception of an odd mention in the newspaper gossip pages or a glossy magazine photo spread, Deng has stayed out of the public eye. She accompanies Murdoch on his worldwide jaunts and stayed at his side when he received prostate cancer treatment last summer. Shortly after they were married in June 1999, Murdoch told Vanity Fair magazine that his relationship with his new wife precluded her from working for NewsCorp. Instead Deng was 'busy working on decorating the new apartment' in Manhattan. He said his bride, a graduate of the Yale School of Management, was 'a bit frustrated' by the narrow scope of her activities, adding, 'We'll just have to resolve that somehow'. The resolution has taken Deng far beyond choosing upholstery. She has become a de facto diplomat on behalf of NewsCorp in China, a country where good relations with government officials is critical to success. Over the past year, she has met with politicians from President Jiang Zemin down. In one of her few answers to written questions, Deng said she had met the Chinese president only at large gatherings on 'formal occasions'.

Deng also said she hadn't initiated any meetings with 'top level' Chinese government officials. In recent months, Deng has appeared with increasing frequency at the side of her husband and stepson James in NewsCorp business meetings. She sometimes intervenes to smooth over potentially awkward situations. In March, for example, she and the father-and-son Murdoch team met a well-connected Chinese businessman in Shanghai, in the hope of advancing NewsCorp's push into the Chinese TV market. The meeting got off to an uncomfortable start, at least partly because of the language barrier between the Murdoch men and their host, according to a participant. But Deng used her bilingual fluency to put everyone at ease,. Deng has become deeply involved in the company's analysis and negotiation of business transactions in China, according to people who have dealt extensively with NewsCorp. Entrepreneurs trying to interest the company in their ideas often go first to Deng, according to a person close to NewsCorp She has told this person she sometimes receives more than 100 emails a day from Chinese people with business proposals. She sometimes meets entrepreneurs at NewsCorp's offices in Beijing or at one of the city's business- gathering spots, such as the St Regis bar.

NewsCorp executives say that among the deals Deng has helped forge is a recent multimillion-dollar company investment in Netease.com, one of the most popular web portals that target the mainland. Earlier this year, she worked with James Murdoch to negotiate NewsCorp's investment of more than $10m in the Chinese-language internet company renren.com, according to Anthony Cheng, founder of the website. Cheng recalls that at one meeting about renren.com, Deng displayed her deep involvement when she grilled him on the difference between the site's marketing strategies in Beijing and Shanghai. She calls him with ideas from time to time on how to improve his company, Cheng adds. 'She's very keyed into all the News Corp and Star TV properties and how to better link them,' he says. Deng initiated News Corp's investment last December in SinoBIT.com, a Beijing website that seeks to link entrepreneurs to investors online, according to Steve Sun, the site's co-founder. She did so by introducing Sun, whom she knew through mutual friends from Yale, to James Murdoch, Sun says. At the same time, people who have done business with Deng say she appears to take great pains not to overstep her unofficial role.

Sun notes, for example, that she didn't attend a second meeting between him and James Murdoch, at which the terms of the investment in SinoBIT.com were finalised. 'She gave James the right to make the decision,' Sun says. Deng hasn't neglected the business of minding Murdoch, who has undergone the kind of change in appearance often associated with a man's marrying a much younger wife. Murdoch for decades preferred establishment addresses such as New York's Upper East Side and Bel Air in Los Angeles. But after remarrying, he and Deng set up home in Manhattan's trendy SoHo district, a few blocks from the apartment of Murdoch's son, Lachlan. Known for his British-style double-breasted business suits, the older Murdoch started sporting black turtlenecks. NewsCorp executives say that sometimes he even forgoes a tie at the office, once unthinkable. He told Vanity Fair he is pumping iron with a personal trainer at 6am and downing a morning concoction of fruit and soy protein. When Deng began appearing at Murdoch's side about two years ago, NewsCorp executives wondered where she had come from and how she got there.

They knew nothing about her other than that she joined Star TV as an intern in 1996, shortly after obtaining an MBA from Yale. Deng herself hasn't commented in the press about her background. Born Deng Wen Di, in the eastern Chinese city of Xuzhou, her parents later moved to the southern city of Guangzhou. Deng was the family name. She later compressed her Chinese first name into 'Wendi'. Deng's father served as director of a machinery factory in Guangzhou. The family lived in a three-bedroom apartment, unusually large by Chinese standards. Wendi Deng has two sisters and one brother. A good student and champion volleyball player, Deng had enrolled in Guangzhou Medical College by the age of 16. Her ticket out of China came in 1987, when she met a Los Angeles couple, Jake and Joyce Cherry. Cherry, then 50, was working in Guangzhou, helping the Chinese to build a factory to make freezers for food-processing plants. The Cherrys' interpreter told them of a young woman who was looking for help with her English. Joyce Cherry, then 42, says she began tutoring the teenager.

In the fall of 1987, Joyce Cherry returned to Los Angeles to enrol her two children in elementary school. Cherry stayed in China to finish the factory project. Soon after Joyce Cherry was resettled in Los Angeles, she says, her husband called to say that Deng wanted to come to the US to study. He asked Joyce Cherry to help complete the paperwork and get an application ready for a local college. The Cherrys sponsored Deng's bid for a student visa and agreed to put her up until she had established herself. The 19-year-old arrived at the Cherry home in February of 1988. She shared a bedroom and bunk beds with her hosts' five-year-old daughter. All was not well, however, between the elder Cherrys. Cherry, who arrived home shortly after Deng came to California, had grown physically ill in China from a combination of overwork and poor diet. The spouses' separation had strained the marriage, the Cherrys concur. At the same time, Joyce says she had grown increasingly suspicious about Deng's relationship with her husband. She recalls discovering photographs her husband had taken of Deng in coquettish poses in his hotel room in Guangzhou.

Cherry confirms he became infatuated with the young woman. Once they were in Los Angeles, he says, Deng started making recommendations about his diet and wardrobe. When her husband and Deng didn't return home some evenings, Joyce says she concluded they were having an affair. She told Deng to leave, and Cherry left soon afterwards. He moved into a nearby apartment with Deng, who had enrolled at California State University at Northridge, a commuter college in the San Fernando Valley. The Cherrys divorced, and Cherry married Deng in February 1990. But that union didn't last. Cherry says that about four months after the wedding, he told Deng to leave because she had started spending time with a man named David Wolf. Cherry was 53 at the time. Wolf was in his mid-twenties, only a few years older than Deng. Wolf, who declined interview requests, worked in the early Nineties for an import-export company. He spoke some Chinese and was interested in a career in China, according to someone who knew him. Cherry says he and Deng were briefly reconciled at one point, but they split up for good when it became clear she was continuing to see Wolf.

'She told me I was a father concept to her, and it would never be anything else,' Cherry recalls. 'I loved that girl.' Divorce records filed with the Los Angeles County Superior Court show that the Cherry-Deng marriage lasted two years and seven months. That was seven months longer than what was required for Deng to obtain a green card, allowing her permanently to live and work in the US as a resident alien. Cherry says he and Deng actually lived together for 'four to five months, at the most'. They haven't spoken since 1996, he adds. During the early Nineties when she was married to Cherry, and for a time after that, Deng on some occasions introduced the tall, well-dressed Wolf as her husband, according to people who knew Deng. Ken Chapman, a California State economics professor, recalls that the last time he saw his former student, in 1995, she handed him Wolf's business card and said she could be reached through her 'husband'. At 5'10" herself, Deng and Wolf made a striking couple, according to people who knew them.

They shared several addresses during the Nineties and told friends that they had met in China, when Wolf had been there on business. For a time in the early Nineties, the couple worked at a suburban Los Angeles gymnastics academy operated by Li Ning, a Chinese three-times Olympics gold medallist. Deng served as a liaison between the gym's Chinese coaching staff and parents of the school-age clientele; Wolf, as the gym's general manager. Today, Wolf works as a director in the Beijing office of Burson-Marsteller, a large PR firm. In 1996, Deng graduated from Yale and began looking for a job. Through a friend, she met Bruce Churchill, who then oversaw finance and corporate development at NewsCorp's Fox TV unit in Los Angeles. She lacked experience in the entertainment industry, but had an Ivy League business degree and was fluent in English and Mandarin, attributes of particular value to News Corp's struggling Asian satellite service, Star TV. Churchill, who was on his way to Star TV as deputy chief executive, offered Deng an internship in Hong Kong. That grew into a full-time job.

Even though Deng was a relatively junior employee, she took an active role in planning Star TV's activities in Hong Kong and China, according to former NewsCorp colleagues. She helped build distribution in China for its Channel V music channel, for example, and explored interactive TV opportunities for the company's News Digital Systems arm. Rupert Murdoch frequently talks to NewsCorp's business development executives around the globe, so it isn't surprising that one day he would cross paths with Deng. In early 1998, she first appeared at his side, acting as his interpreter in Shanghai and Beijing. By that summer, the Star TV staff was buzzing about romance between the pair. After dinner meetings in Hong Kong, they were observed holding hands. In May, Murdoch had separated from his wife of 31 years, Anna. The split surprised even his closest aides, who say they hadn't seen any sign of a rupture. Murdoch told senior Star TV executives in the autumn of 1998 that his relationship with Deng was 'serious'. Star TV's then-chairman, Gareth Chang, told Murdoch at the time that it was a bad idea for Deng to remain on staff, given her personal relationship with the parent company's chairman.

That wouldn't be a problem, Murdoch replied, because Deng would be resigning and moving with him to New York. Today, Rupert and Wendi Murdoch spend time not only in SoHo, but also at their home in Bel Air and on a ranch near Carmel, California. Murdoch controls about 30 per cent of NewsCorp, a stake worth roughly $8.7 billion. He has said the stock is owned by trusts that name his three children as beneficiaries. Rupert and Anna Murdoch's divorce became final in June 1999. Negotiations over a divorce settlement dragged on for nearly 12 months, as Anna Murdoch's lawyers tried to determine the extent of NewsCorp's global assets. Financial terms of the settlement weren't made public, but the Murdochs have said they agreed on one crucial point: that their children eventually would gain control of the company. Five months later Anna Murdoch married widower William Mann, chairman of Henry Mann Securities in New York. Rupert Murdoch and Wendi Deng were married on June 25, 1999, 17 days after his divorce became final.

Murdoch Divorce Said to Be Almost Final - The New York Times The New York Times Media |Murdoch Divorce Said to Be Almost Final Search Continue reading the main story Rupert Murdoch and Wendi Deng Murdoch are negotiating the final details of their divorce settlement, a deal that will officially end the 14-year marriage of the media mogul and his third wife, according to people with direct knowledge of the negotiations. A judge has scheduled a hearing in the case, Murdoch vs. Murdoch, for 9:30 a.m. on Wednesday at New York State Supreme Court in Manhattan, according to a courthouse clerk. Both Murdochs are scheduled to attend the conference. Lawyers for the couple could announce at the hearing, or even earlier, that they have reached an agreement, though the talks could still fall apart, these people cautioned. William D. Zabel, a lawyer for Ms. Murdoch, declined to comment. Mr. Murdoch’s divorce lawyer, Ira E. Garr, was not immediately available to comment.

Advertisement Continue reading the main story People close to the Murdochs have described the settlement negotiations as amicable, in part because they signed one prenuptial and two postnuptial agreements outlining the separation of assets in the event of a divorce. Still, there have been several contested issues. It is unclear how those issues have been resolved, but one of the stickier ones is the dividing of their residences. In New York, the Murdochs lived in a penthouse triplex at 834 Fifth Avenue that was once owned by Laurance S. Rockefeller. The Murdochs purchased the apartment for $44 million in 2005. Photo The newly married Rupert Murdoch and Wendi Deng in 1999. Credit Reuters In Beijing, they own a siheyuan, a courtyard-style house near the Chinese capital’s Forbidden City. Shortly after marrying, they transformed the home in an old hutong, or alley, into a sprawling oasis filled with works by Chinese artists. Mrs. Murdoch has held parties there in the past with such guests as Tony and Cherie Blair. There are also properties in Australia, London and California.

There are also the custody arrangements for their daughters, Grace, 12, and Chloe, 10. Mr. Murdoch has four children from his previous two marriages. In addition, the Murdoch family trust, which holds most of Mr. Murdoch’s wealth, estimated at about $13 billion, has been a point of contention. Mr. Murdoch upset his wife by not giving their daughters the same voting rights in the trust as his four elder children. The two girls do, however, have an equal economic interest. For the last several years, Mrs. Murdoch has focused on producing movies. Mr. Murdoch has devoted his time to the recent split of his multibillion-dollar media conglomerate into two separate companies, News Corporation, the publishing company, and 21st Century Fox, which houses the entertainment assets. Once a fixture on the New York social circuit with a group of loyal friends that includes David Geffen, Diane von Furstenberg, Arianna Huffington and Bono, Mrs. Murdoch has kept a low profile since June, when Mr. Murdoch surprised her with divorce papers. The filing said that the “relationship between husband and wife has broken down irretrievably.” Mr.

Murdoch met Wendi Deng in 1998 on a business trip to China, where she worked for a division of News Corporation. They married a year later in New York harbor aboard Mr. Murdoch’s 155-foot sailing yacht, the Morning Glory. The boat has been put up for sale. Correction: November 19, 2013 An earlier version of this article misstated the age of the Murdochs’ daughter Grace. She turned 12 on Tuesday; she is not 11 years old. Rupert Murdoch files for divorce from wife of 14 years - CNN.com News Corp. CEO Rupert Mudoch files for divorce from his third wife, Wendi Deng Chinese-born, Yale-educated Deng married Murdoch in 1999; the pair have two daughters Deng made headlines when she defended Murdoch from man armed with shaving-foam pie Questions remain about how Murdoch's estimated $11 billion fortune will be divided It's another slap heard around the world, albeit a legal one this time. Two years after Wendi Deng made headlines for forcefully defending her husband -- News Corp.

CEO Rupert Murdoch -- from a pie-throwing intruder in Britain's Parliament, she and their relationship are in the news again. Murdoch is filing for divorce from Deng, his third wife, a spokesman for the media mogul confirmed Thursday. It's not known what precipitated the split to end the marriage that began in 1999. Speculation, though, has swirled for months about the state of the couple's relationship. The Chinese-born, Yale-educated Deng was very accomplished in her own right pre-Murdoch, even though critics jabbed her as a "gold digger" through her marriage to the media mogul. MUST WATCH Media titans Malone, Murdoch face off 02:24 While her 82-year-old husband runs one of the most powerful media conglomerates in the world -- one that includes 20th Century Fox, Fox television (including Fox News and FX), Sky news service, HarperCollins publishing and many newspapers including the Wall Street Journal, Britain's Times and several publications in his native Australia -- Deng had stayed largely out of the public eye. That was until July 2011.

She was sitting behind Murdoch in Parliament in London, while he testified about his company's involvement in a phone-hacking scandal that rocked Britain. Comedian Jonnie Marbles came at Murdoch with a shaving-foam pie. Deng leaped into action, lunging at Marbles and smashing his hand with her own. "Mr. Murdoch," said parliamentarian Tom Watson, who minutes earlier had been particularly critical of the media titan, "your wife has a pretty good left hook." Social media erupted in response to what soon became known as "the slap heard round the world" and earned her the sobriquet "tiger wife." The reaction was particularly strong on Chinese microblogs, where many hailed Deng's reaction as a moment of pride for Asian women. "The harder she slapped, the more we can tell how eager she was to protect her husband ... she is still a woman who longs for love," wrote one person under the handle MissQccc. Chinese-born daughter of a factory engineer So who is Wendi Deng? She has talked about growing up "very, very poor" in a small town in China, as the daughter of a factory engineer.

Deng eventually landed in the United States, including earning a master's degree at the Yale School of Management, where she now serves on its Board of Advisors . Before she met Murdoch, she married the man who had sponsored her student visa in the United States during the late 1980s. She'd secure a "green card" to stay permanently in the United States -- but her first marriage proved brief. Murdoch and Deng met at a Hong Kong cocktail party shortly after her graduation from Yale. Deng then went on to work at Star TV, a Hong Kong-based satellite television service that's under Murdoch's corporate umbrella. In a 2011 interview with his wife on CCTV, Murdoch recalled her interpreting for him while he toured the Chinese mainland. A fervent pursuit followed, though Deng didn't necessarily return all his affection. "I fell in love with her, and I asked her. She said no, and it took a long time to persuade her," Murdoch said. Their 1999 wedding occurred shortly after Murdoch filed for divorce from his second wife, Anna Torv Murdoch.

(Anna Torv wed Murdoch in 1967, the same year he divorced his first wife and one year before Deng was born, according to multiple reports.) What becomes of Murdoch's $11 billion fortune? Shortly after the wedding, Murdoch announced his new wife would step down from her executive role at a News Corp. subsidiary in Hong Kong. He described her as "busy working on decorating the new apartment." A Wall Street Journal profile, published in 2000, hinted she didn't entirely leave the business world. Deng frequently accompanied her husband and stepson to meetings with high-ranking Chinese officials, where she'd sometimes intervene "to smooth over potentially awkward situations," according to that report. Over the past 12 years, she gave birth to and raised two girls, Grace and Chloe. (Murdoch has four other children from his two previous marriages, some of whom hold prominent posts at News Corp.) Her Yale profile notes she's a co-founder of Big Feet Productions, an independent studio in East London that makes applications and games for Apple operating systems according to its website .

And in 2011, she produced, " Snow Flower and the Secret Fan ," a film set in 19th century China centered on two girls who circumvent cultural restrictions on females. A divorce would end her union to Rupert Murdoch, and perhaps set up a battle over how much of his fortune -- which Forbes recently estimated at $11.2 billion -- she and her children will receive. This potential showdown comes at a tenuous time for News Corp., which recently approved a plan to split its operations into two publicly traded companies. Murdoch, the existing company's largest shareholder, is set to become chairman of the two new companies. It was not immediately known if Deng and Murdoch signed a prenuptial agreement prior to their wedding, and if so where they filed it. Michael Stutman , president of the New York chapter of the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers, said he'd expect they did so in New York -- a state with a tendency to enforce terms of such agreements. "New York will apply those terms so long as they are not grossly unfair or unconscionable," Stutman said. "The same cannot be said about every other country in the world."

Question: Who married Wendy Deng in 1999?
Answer: RUPERT MURDOCH